Download or read book The Bloody Legacy of Pink Higgins written by Bill O'Neal and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pink Higgins was a rugged Texan who lived a life of classic Western adventure. He was a cowboy, Indian fighter, trail driver, stock detective, rancher, and deadly shootist who killed more adversaries than did such noted gunfighters as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson. Pink battled Comanches and rustlers, and led a faction in the murderous Horrell-Higgins feud of Lampasas County (Texas). Yet he was a hard-working family man, devoted to his nine children. His son, Cullen Higgins, as a lawyer and judge, would become entangled in a series of bloody events involving a powerful cattle baron and the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. In this, the first book-length biography of Pink Higgins, the author reveals never before published details about the violence that followed the Higgins family to West Texas.
Download or read book Deadly Dozen written by Robert K. DeArment and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday—such are the legendary names that spring to mind when we think of the western gunfighter. But in the American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of grassroots gunfighters straddled both sides of the law without hesitation. Deadly Dozen tells the story of twelve infamous gunfighters, feared in their own times but almost forgotten today. Now, noted historian Robert K. DeArment has compiled the stories of these obscure men. DeArment, a life-long student of law and lawlessness in the West, has combed court records, frontier newspapers, and other references to craft twelve complete biographical portraits. The combined stories of Deadly Dozen offer an intensive look into the lives of imposing figures who in their own ways shaped the legendary Old West. More than a collective biography of dangerous gunfighters, Deadly Dozen also functions as a social history of the gunfighter culture of the post-Civil War frontier West. As Walter Noble Burns did for Billy the Kid in 1926 and Stuart N. Lake for Wyatt Earp in 1931, DeArment—himself a talented writer—brings these figures from the Old West to life. John Bull, Pat Desmond, Mart Duggan, Milt Yarberry, Dan Tucker, George Goodell, Bill Standifer, Charley Perry, Barney Riggs, Dan Bogan, Dave Kemp, and Jeff Kidder are the twelve dangerous men that Robert K. DeArment studies in Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West.
Download or read book The Texas Rangers written by Mike Cox and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-03-18 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the history of the Texas Rangers from their origin in 1821 to protect the settlers from the Karankawa Indians, and describes how they became one of the fiercest law enforcement groups in America.
Download or read book Ten Deadly Texans written by Dan Anderson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lighthearted history of ten of Texas’s most notorious outlaws, including Clyde Barrow and a bank robber dressed as Santa Claus. The Wild Westerners were a tough breed. They started young and tended to die young, grow wilder, or fizzle into oblivion. Those outlaws that had the most feuds, gunfights, and robberies within the state lines are profiled here along with their associates, enemies, and accomplices. A rough chronological order of events spanning from pre-Civil War to 1935 tracks significant people and events. With so few lawmen available to police the state, troublesome youths quickly developed into heinous individuals. John Wesley Hardin killed a fellow classmate in a one-room schoolhouse, and eight-year-old James Miller was arrested for murdering his own grandparents. Beginnings and endings for each individual varied. While Sam Bass and Bonnie Parker were cut down in their twenties, Dock Newton didn’t rob his last train until age seventy-seven. Other members of the Barrow Gang lived into their fifties and sixties after transforming themselves from dangerous criminals to ordinary citizens. Texans are often described as being larger than life. Their lives were legendary, their demeanor solid, their illegal activities dramatic and varied from beginning to end. The same lighthearted take on Western history that permeated Dan Anderson and Laurence J. Yadon’s previous works resonates in their latest popular history. True stories, tall tales, and numerous anecdotes comprise this book of ten of the deadliest outlaws to cross the Texas line. Praise for Ten Deadly Texans “Picking the top ten of virtually anything is difficult if not impossible, but [Yadon and Anderson] have presented a strong argument that this grouping belongs at the top of any list of deadly fighters. In their own way, each one chose a deadly path filled with violence, bloodshed, high drama, and excitement.” —Chuck Parsons, author of John B. Armstrong: Texas Ranger and Pioneer Ranchman “A well-researched and highly readable account of the Lone Star State's meanest men and women.” —Mike Cox, author of The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900 “Yadon and Anderson have done their homework to separate the truth from the legend, because not only are they good historians, they know that the real story is quite often better than the legend. Ten Deadly Texans takes you from the Civil War to the Great Depression, from cow ponies and six-guns to Ford V-8s and automatic weapons, through the real lives of some of Texas’s most notorious sons.” —James R. Knight, author of Bonnie and Clyde: A Twenty-First-Century Update
Download or read book Lone Star Justice written by Robert M. Utley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with adventures worthy of Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. The Rangers began in the 1820s as loose groups of citizen soldiers, banding together to chase Indians and Mexicans on the raw Texas frontier. Utley shows how, under the leadership of men like Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch, these fiercely independent fighters were transformed into a well-trained, cohesive team. Armed with a revolutionary new weapon, Samuel Colt's repeating revolver, they became a deadly fighting force, whether battling Comanches on the plains or storming the city of Monterey in the Mexican-American War. As the Rangers evolved from part-time warriors to full-time lawmen by 1874, they learned to face new dangers, including homicidal feuds, labor strikes, and vigilantes turned mobs. They battled train robbers, cattle thieves and other outlaws--it was Rangers, for example, who captured John Wesley Hardin, the most feared gunman in the West. Based on exhaustive research in Texas archives, this is the most authoritative history of the Texas Rangers in over half a century. It will stand alongside other classics of Western history by Robert M. Utley--a vivid portrait of the Old West and of the legendary men who kept the law on the lawless frontier.
Download or read book The Johnson Sims Feud written by Bill O'Neal and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Johnson & Sims families were pioneer ranchers, settling in the same region--Lampasas & Burnet counties--in the dangerous years before the Civil War. After the War, Billy & Nannie Johnson & Dave & Laura Sims establish large ranches in adjoining counties in West Texas. At the turn of the century the two families united in a marriage of 14-year-old Gladys Johnson & 21-year-old Ed Sims. Several years later a nasty divorce ensued due in part to Gladys willfulness & Ed's drinking. More trouble followed over custody of their two children & Gladys took matters into her own hands.....
Download or read book 1877 written by Michael A. Bellesiles and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] powerful examination of a nation trying to make sense of the complex changes and challenges of the post–Civil War era.” —Carol Berkin, author of A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution In 1877—a decade after the Civil War—not only was the United States gripped by a deep depression, but the country was also in the throes of nearly unimaginable violence and upheaval, marking the end of the brief period known as Reconstruction and reestablishing white rule across the South. In the wake of the contested presidential election of 1876, white supremacist mobs swept across the South, killing and driving out the last of the Reconstruction state governments. A strike involving millions of railroad workers turned violent as it spread from coast to coast, and for a moment seemed close to toppling the nation’s economic structure. Celebrated historian Michael A. Bellesiles reveals that the fires of that fated year also fueled a hothouse of cultural and intellectual innovation. He relates the story of 1877 not just through dramatic events, but also through the lives of famous and little-known Americans alike. “A superb and troubling book about the soul of Modern America.” —William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West “A bold, insightful book, richly researched, and fast paced . . . Bellesiles vividly portrays on a single canvas the violent confrontations in 1877.” —Alfred F. Young, coeditor of Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation “[A] wonderful read that is sure to appeal to those interested in the challenges of creating a post–Civil War society.” —Choice
Download or read book The Ranger Ideal Volume 2 written by Darren L. Ivey and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They say everything is bigger in Texas, and the Lone Star State can certainly boast of immense ranches, vast oil fields, enormous cowboy hats, and larger-than-life heroes. Among the greatest of the latter are the iconic Texas Rangers, a service that has existed, in one form or another, since 1823. Established in Waco in 1968, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum continues to honor these legendary symbols of Texas and the American West. While upholding a proud heritage of duty and sacrifice, even men who wear the cinco peso badge can have their own champions. Thirty-one individuals—whose lives span more than two centuries—have been enshrined in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. In The Ranger Ideal Volume 2: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1874-1930, Darren L. Ivey presents capsule biographies of the twelve inductees who served Texas in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ivey begins with John B. Jones, who directed his Rangers through their development from state troops to professional lawmen; then covers Leander H. McNelly, John B. Armstrong, James B. Gillett, Jesse Lee Hall, George W. Baylor, Bryan Marsh, and Ira Aten—the men who were responsible for some of the Rangers’ most legendary feats. Ivey concludes with James A. Brooks, William J. McDonald, John R. Hughes, and John H. Rogers, the “Four Great Captains” who guided the Texas Rangers into the twentieth century.
Download or read book 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen 1835 1935 written by Laurence Yadon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-29 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively reference covering a century’s worth of shooters, sheriffs, and more in the Lone Star State. The Lone Star State is known for producing both vicious outlaws and valorous lawmen. While Machine Gun Kelly terrorized urban civilians, lawmen such as Ranger John Barclay Armstrong tried to keep things under control. This is the story of Texas’s most famous criminals, intrepid lawmen—and in the case of James Edwin Reed, both—as well as such figures as the legendary Judge Roy Bean. This reference brings to life a time before the West was tamed, and also includes a chronology of well-known crimes and a locale list of notorious events.
Download or read book Go Down Together written by Jeff Guinn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment they first cut a swathe of crime across 1930s America, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker have been glamorised in print, on screen and in legend. The reality of their brief and catastrophic lives is very different -- and far more fascinating. Combining exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material, author Jeff Guinn tells the real story of two youngsters from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Thanks in great part to surviving relatives of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who provided Guinn with access to never-before-published family documents and photographs, this book reveals the truth behind the myth, told with cinematic sweep and unprecedented insight by a master storyteller.
Download or read book The Horrell Wars written by David Johnson and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades the Horrell brothers of Lampasas, Texas, have been portrayed as ruthless killers and outlaws, but author David Johnson paints a different picture of these controversial men. The Horrells were ranchers, and while folklore has encouraged the belief that they built their herds by rustling, contemporary records indicate a far different picture. The family patriarch, Sam Horrell, was slain at forty-eight during a fight with Apaches in New Mexico. One Horrell son died in Confederate service; of the remaining six brothers, five were shot to death. Only Sam, Jr., lived to old age and died of natural causes. Johnson covers the Horrells and their wars from cradle to grave. Their initial confrontation with the State Police at Lampasas in 1873 marked the most disastrous shootout in Reconstruction history and in the history of the State Police. The brothers and loyal friends then fled to New Mexico, where they became entangled in what would later evolve into the violent Lincoln County War. Their contribution, known to history as the Horrell War, has racial overtones in addition to the violence that took place in Lincoln County. The brothers returned to Texas where in time they became involved in the Horrell-Higgins War. The family was nearly wiped out following the feud when two of the brothers were killed by a mob in Bosque County. Johnson presents an up-to-date account of these wars and incidents while maintaining a neutral stance necessary for historical books dealing with feuds. He also includes previously unpublished photographs of the Horrell family and others.
Download or read book The Governor s Hounds written by Barry A. Crouch and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tumultuous years following the Civil War, violence and lawlessness plagued the state of Texas, often overwhelming the ability of local law enforcement to maintain order. In response, Reconstruction-era governor Edmund J. Davis created a statewide police force that could be mobilized whenever and wherever local authorities were unable or unwilling to control lawlessness. During its three years (1870–1873) of existence, however, the Texas State Police was reviled as an arm of the Radical Republican party and widely condemned for being oppressive, arrogant, staffed with criminals and African Americans, and expensive to maintain, as well as for enforcing the new and unpopular laws that protected the rights of freed slaves. Drawing extensively on the wealth of previously untouched records in the Texas State Archives, as well as other contemporary sources, Barry A. Crouch and Donaly E. Brice here offer the first major objective assessment of the Texas State Police and its role in maintaining law and order in Reconstruction Texas. Examining the activities of the force throughout its tenure and across the state, the authors find that the Texas State Police actually did much to solve the problem of violence in a largely lawless state. While acknowledging that much of the criticism the agency received was merited, the authors make a convincing case that the state police performed many of the same duties that the Texas Rangers later assumed and fulfilled the same need for a mobile, statewide law enforcement agency.
Download or read book Rawhide Ranger Ira Aten written by Bob Alexander and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ira Aten was the epitome of a frontier lawman. He enrolled in Company D of the Texas Rangers during the transition from Indian fighters to peace officers. The years Ira spent as a Ranger were packed with adventure, border troubles, shoot-outs, major crimes, and manhunts. Aten's role in these events earned him a spot in the Ranger Hall of Fame.
Download or read book The Adventures of Jessie a young Texas girl in the 1930s written by Lynn Martinez and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Adventures of Jessie, a young Texas girl in the 1930s is the story of Jessie Standard, a ten-year-old girl growing up in the small Texas town of Lampasas during the Great Depression. She and her family live in the fire station, because her daddy is the only paid employee of the Lampasas Fire Department. Jessie is mischievous and regularly manages to find trouble! She spies on her big sister LaVerne, steals the show at the town dance, and even sneaks onto a plane her brother flies! Jessie’s first love is Prince, her pony. When times get hard, Daddy has to sell Prince. It breaks Jessie’s heart, but she is determined to find a way to be with him again someday!
Download or read book Texas Rangers written by Bob Alexander and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-07-15 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger? Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.
Download or read book Annual Meeting written by Texas State Historical Association and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A program of the annual meeting.
Download or read book Tracking the Texas Ranger Historians written by Bruce A. Glasrud and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first systematic inquiry into the Texas Rangers did not begin until 1935 with Walter Prescott Webb’s publication The Texas Rangers. Since then numerous works have appeared on the Rangers, but no volume has been published before that covers the various historians of the Rangers and their approaches to the topic. Editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss Jr. gather essays that profile individual historians of the Texas Rangers, explore themes and issues in Ranger history, and comprise archival research, biographies, and autobiographies. Several approaches in Texas historiography have influenced the writings on the Texas Rangers and serve to organize the chapters in the volume. Traditionalists (Chuck Parsons, Stephen L. Moore, and Bob Alexander) stress the revered happenings in the nineteenth century that brought about the Lone Star state and its empire-building Ranger force. To these historical writers the Texas Rangers were part of a golden age. Revisionists (Robert M. Utley, Louis R. Sadler, and Charles H. Harris) pull back from this adulation, emphasize the importance of overlooked ethnic and racial groups, and point out misbehavior on the part of Rangers. They also want to separate fact from fiction. Some Ranger historians (Frederick Wilkins and Mike Cox) straddle both traditional and revisionist approaches in their works. The final group, Cultural Constructionalists (Gary Clayton Anderson, Américo Paredes, and Monica Muñoz Martinez), continue the work of Revisionists and focus on an interconnected past that includes theoretical approaches and the study of memory and regional identities. Several themes emerge throughout the book. One is how the Rangers changed from unorganized mounted militia, dragoons in the modern sense, to organized cavalry forces with six-shooter firepower who served as a military arm of the state and nation. A second is how the dichotomous views of the Rangers—as either patriot warriors or bloody avengers—left their imprint on Anglo and Hispanic society. This divergent examination especially derived from incidents in the US-Mexican War, the period from 1910 to 1920, and the lower Rio Grande valley in the 1960s. And yet another theme is how the Rangers first resisted and fought against, yet ultimately absorbed, all creeds and colors into their ranks over two hundred years as they evolved into police officers: Anglo, Black, Hispanic, Indian, and women Rangers.
